A Little Oxford Dictionary of Humorous Quotations

Life doesn’t wait to be asked: it comes grinning in, sits down uninvited and helps itself to bread and cheese, and comments uninhibitedly on the decorations.

Philip Larkin 1922–85 English poet

Life is something to do when you can’t get to sleep.

Fran Lebowitz 1950– American writer

For the happiest life, days should be rigorously planned, nights left open to chance.

Mignon McLaughlin 1913–83 American writer

There’s one thing to be said for inviting trouble: it generally accepts.

Mae Maloo

Whenever I investigate a smell, I find that the answer is always bad. It’s never: ‘What is that? [sniff] muffins’!

Demetri Martin 1973– American comedian

It’s not true that life is one damn thing after another—it’s one damn thing over and over.

Edna St Vincent Millay 1892–1950 American poet

There are three ingredients in the good life: learning, earning, and yearning.

Christopher Morley 1890–1957 American writer

There are few things in this world more reassuring than an unhappy lottery winner.

Tony Parsons 1953– English writer

You’re born naked and the rest is drag.

RuPaul 1960– American drag queen

I love living. I have some problems with my life, but living is the best thing they’ve come up with so far.

Neil Simon 1927– American dramatist

Life is a gamble at terrible odds—if it was a bet, you wouldn’t take it.

Tom Stoppard 1937– British dramatist

We’re all in this together—by ourselves.

Lily Tomlin 1939– American comedienne and actress

What a queer thing Life is! So unlike anything else, don’t you know, if you see what I mean.

P. G. Wodehouse 1881–1975 English-born writer

Lifestyle

What is the secret of my long life? I really don’t know—cigarettes, whisky and wild, wild women!

Henry Allingham 1896–2009 English airman, the oldest British survivor of the First World War

The only thing I regret about my life is the length of it. If I had to live my life again I’d make all the same mistakes—only sooner.

Tallulah Bankhead 1903–68 American actress

Never try to keep up with the Joneses. Drag them down to your level.

Quentin Crisp 1908–99 English writer

If A is a success in life, then A equals x plus y plus z. Work is x; y is play; and z is keeping your mouth shut.

Albert Einstein 1879–1955 German-born theoretical physicist

Most people die without ever having lived. Luckily for them, they don’t realize it.

Henrik Ibsen 1828–1906 Norwegian dramatist

You only live once, and the way I live, once is enough.

Frank Sinatra 1915–98 American singer and actor

Literature

see alsoPOETRY, WRITING

Literature’s always a good card to play for Honours. It makes people think that Cabinet ministers are educated.

Arnold Bennett 1867–1931 English novelist

‘What is the use of a book’, thought Alice, ‘without pictures or conversations?’

Lewis Carroll 1832–98 English writer and logician

If my books had been any worse, I should not have been invited to Hollywood, and if they had been any better, I should not have come.

Raymond Chandler 1888–1959 American writer

on encountering a footnote:

Like going downstairs to answer the doorbell while making love.

Noël Coward 1899–1973 English dramatist, actor, and composer

When I want to read a novel, I write one.

Benjamin Disraeli 1804–81 British Tory statesman and novelist

listening to readings from Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings:

Oh fuck, not another elf!

Hugo Dyson 1896–1975 English academic

How rare, how precious is frivolity! How few writers can prostitute all their powers! They are always implying, ‘I am capable of higher things.’

E. M. Forster 1879–1970 English novelist

What greater service could I have performed for German literature than that I didn’t bother with it?

Frederick the Great 1712–86 Prussian king

It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature.

Henry James 1843–1916 American novelist

A beginning, a muddle, and an end.

Philip Larkin 1922–85 English poet, on the ‘classic formula’ for a novel

Literature is mostly about having sex and not much about having children. Life is the other way round.

David Lodge 1935– English novelist

From the moment I picked up your book until I laid it down, I was convulsed with laughter. Some day I intend reading it.

Groucho Marx 1890–1977 American film comedian

In literature as in love, we are astonished at what is chosen by others.

André Maurois 1885–1967 French writer

Is Moby Dick the whale or the man?

Harold Ross 1892–1951 American journalist and editor